I bought Nick Hornby's The Polysyllabic Spree this weekend, after reading several raves for it, not least of all from Mr. Hornby's devoted fan and (dare I say) friend, DV. The book is a collection of Hornby's column for the Believer - which is to say the guaranteed "must read" item in the entire magazine (some people read Christopher Hitchens' literary musings in The Atlantic with the same devotion; Hornby's work is distinct from Hitch's by virtue of its genuine (and entirely beguiling) humility).
Hornby begins his monthly column with a list of books bought, contrasted to a list of books read. I'm tempted to follow suit, and just might, if I could be assured Hornby is fudging (conservatively) on his list of books bought. If the lists are accurate, he manages a better percentage than I do! (Which might make the exercise especially worthwhile for me...)
It's late in the month, but I'm confident Hornby's book will be listed among March's Books Read. His prose is easy on the brain - deceptively so. It works like the best liquor: it is consumed with ease, but does its work with an alarming speed and thoroughness. Highly recommended, for all those reasons.
Sunday, March 20, 2005
Friday, March 11, 2005
The Inexorcisable John Gardner
Who remembers that asshole?
John Irving, on John Gardner
Google has failed me. I read the above quote a year or two ago in a magazine while waiting for my dentist, and although I can remember Irving's context, I remember little else. I'm thinking it was a Maclean's, or Globe & Mail profile of Irving circa: The Cider House Rules Goes Hollywood. At the time, Tom Wolfe provoked the chattering classes with his most recent divide-and-conquer loud-mouthery, an essay in Hooking Up which decried every living American novelist for forsaking their duties as the chroniclers of their times. Wolfe had already provoked several bloodletting responses from Updike, Mailer and Irving, and Irving was weary of giving free press to this flannel-clad coot. Still, the profiler pressed on. Irving finally said something to the effect that no good comes from publicly declaring what novelists ought to be writing. To hammer home the dire consequences of such foolishness, he added, "The last guy to try that was John Gardner, and who remembers that asshole?"
(Digression: it occurs to me that Wolfe, Irving, Mailer and Updike engage in an ongoing pissing match, a peculiarly male activity that makes little or no splash (ahem) in the ever-expanding circle of women readers. Toni Morrison, Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Walker, Janet Turner Hospital — writers who have arguably taken over the vanguard of Western english literature from Updike, Mailer, Wolfe and even Irving — don't give Wolfe's tirades so much as a curious sniff. Exceptions allowed for, but I don't believe women care for such behavior. This sort of bluster is what occurs when the men at the table have had too many glasses of wine, thanks to an overly-generous host who regrets making the invitation, and has retreated to another room.)
Irving posed it rhetorically, but in fact the question of who remembers Gardner has a ready and increasingly apparent answer: anyone who's ever attended a creative writing course on the North American continent. Irving doesn't trouble himself with the rags in which Gardner's ghost makes regular appearances, but they are the product of, and for, the last heretical cult of believers who have given themselves heart and soul to the sanctity of the word in print. Last year we witnessed Gardner's shaggy chimera arise among the literrowdies at The Believer; this year he haunts the opening pages of Poets & Writers. These publications represent the Two Towers for creative writing students: P&W is an overly sober (but practical) version of Writer's Digest, while The Believer is everything the creative writing student aspires to: it is hipper-than-thou, smack-in-the-zeitgeist, name-droppingly popular, without qualifying as a sell-out (i.e., it's still struggling to turn a profit).
I, too, remember Gardner — thanks solely to my experience in a creative writing course. My prof took care to mention Gardner at our concluding class, stating for the record that Gardner might well have been the greatest American writer of the century, and a worthy teacher of craft to boot. This startling pronouncement launched us out of the classroom and straight to the university bookstore to see if they stocked any of Gardner's books. The book guy I talked to said, "The only title we bother with is The Art of Fiction, and we're out of stock."
This turned out to be the case at other book stores, too. When I finally purchased my own copy, I quickly discovered why: Gardner's lessons on craft are infectious in their passion, his literary observations astonishingly broad in scope and keen in their precision. I devoured the book, then returned to the beginning and devoured it again. While reading, I contrasted Gardner's aural clarity to the benign fudging of my prof. It was just as well we'd been so lately introduced to Gardner — any earlier, and our prof might well have had a mutiny on his hands.
Though he was no admirer of his fiction, Gardner took Camus's most breathtaking declaration ("There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide") and wielded it in his criticism and art. He asserted, in The Art of Fiction, On Becoming A Novelist, On Writers And Writing, and most notoriously in On Moral Fiction, that a reader considering suicide is right to expect dissuasion and something life-affirming in a story. For the writer who is just starting out, this assertion, stated with the passion and erudition that only Gardner could muster, is profoundly empowering. Gardner tells the punk writer the attention she pays to her art is worthy — is, in fact, the only important thing — because it is the difference between life and death.
Of course, Gardner caught flak in his critical execution of this maxim. He had no trouble locating writers who tried to dodge or purposely defeat this expectation of his, and he didn't hesitate to call them immoral. It's worth noting the writers he disparaged most — John Barth, and the Williams Gass and Bardis — are now disappearing from critical favor and public awareness with a speed that would have astonished the original readers of Gardner's criticism. It's also worth noting that, while Gardner had nothing but praise for John Irving, he certainly had a pickle up his ass when it came to E.L. Doctorow (whose novels I would, with a few exceptions, choose over Irving's in a heartbeat).
As for Gardner's fiction, well . . . If, as Godard said, the proper way to criticize a movie is to make one yourself, Gardner proved himself eager to criticize contemporary novels with novels of his own. This tendency has the unfortunate effect of miring much of his work to his time, particularly the novels he wrote to correct the noise and flash of metafiction. Again, any punk kid aspiring to write will have little difficulty reading Freddy's Book, or even October Light — but most serious readers over 30 will find their patience with metafictional concerns has long been exhausted in favor of an intuitive, Aristotelian acceptance of what really "works". You don't need a novel to help you reach that conclusion — you just need to get older.
The best of Gardner's fiction, however, is transcendent. Novels like The Sunlight Dialogues, and especially Grendel, are charmingly baroque, with ornate touches that belie the seriousness of Gardner's aesthetic ethic. Like his best criticism, they invite and reward multiple readings.
Even so, it seems as if it is Gardner's fate to occupy the same literary parabola as one of his heroes, Dorothea Brande. Brande was, in her day (the 1930s and 40s), a prolific writer of novels, short stories and plays. She was also a recognized critic. But her only surviving work, acknowledged and brought back into print every 15 years or so, is a snappy little book called Becoming A Writer (anyone frustrated with the New-Age-speak of The Artist's Way is encouraged to seek out a copy). The current reprint includes a forward by none other than "that asshole" himself. And if Gardner's continued presence in magazines like The Believer and Poets & Writers is any indication, we won't see The Art Of Fiction disappear from print anytime soon.
It's difficult to speculate what Gardner would have thought of his final claim to literary longevity, but it does qualify as a truly remarkable legacy. For writers proceeding on shaky legs, Gardner's encouragement is not only helpful in its precision and direction, it is the equivalent of a shot of existential steroids. Too bad John Irving is as bullish, if not as eloquent, in his opinions as Gardner was. Irving, who has a novel or two struggling to transcend the decades they were published in, might just consider himself fortunate should his name be recalled with the fervor of Gardner's.
John Irving, on John Gardner
 |
| "Or his stinkin' pipe?" |
(Digression: it occurs to me that Wolfe, Irving, Mailer and Updike engage in an ongoing pissing match, a peculiarly male activity that makes little or no splash (ahem) in the ever-expanding circle of women readers. Toni Morrison, Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Walker, Janet Turner Hospital — writers who have arguably taken over the vanguard of Western english literature from Updike, Mailer, Wolfe and even Irving — don't give Wolfe's tirades so much as a curious sniff. Exceptions allowed for, but I don't believe women care for such behavior. This sort of bluster is what occurs when the men at the table have had too many glasses of wine, thanks to an overly-generous host who regrets making the invitation, and has retreated to another room.)
Irving posed it rhetorically, but in fact the question of who remembers Gardner has a ready and increasingly apparent answer: anyone who's ever attended a creative writing course on the North American continent. Irving doesn't trouble himself with the rags in which Gardner's ghost makes regular appearances, but they are the product of, and for, the last heretical cult of believers who have given themselves heart and soul to the sanctity of the word in print. Last year we witnessed Gardner's shaggy chimera arise among the literrowdies at The Believer; this year he haunts the opening pages of Poets & Writers. These publications represent the Two Towers for creative writing students: P&W is an overly sober (but practical) version of Writer's Digest, while The Believer is everything the creative writing student aspires to: it is hipper-than-thou, smack-in-the-zeitgeist, name-droppingly popular, without qualifying as a sell-out (i.e., it's still struggling to turn a profit).
I, too, remember Gardner — thanks solely to my experience in a creative writing course. My prof took care to mention Gardner at our concluding class, stating for the record that Gardner might well have been the greatest American writer of the century, and a worthy teacher of craft to boot. This startling pronouncement launched us out of the classroom and straight to the university bookstore to see if they stocked any of Gardner's books. The book guy I talked to said, "The only title we bother with is The Art of Fiction, and we're out of stock."
This turned out to be the case at other book stores, too. When I finally purchased my own copy, I quickly discovered why: Gardner's lessons on craft are infectious in their passion, his literary observations astonishingly broad in scope and keen in their precision. I devoured the book, then returned to the beginning and devoured it again. While reading, I contrasted Gardner's aural clarity to the benign fudging of my prof. It was just as well we'd been so lately introduced to Gardner — any earlier, and our prof might well have had a mutiny on his hands.
Though he was no admirer of his fiction, Gardner took Camus's most breathtaking declaration ("There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide") and wielded it in his criticism and art. He asserted, in The Art of Fiction, On Becoming A Novelist, On Writers And Writing, and most notoriously in On Moral Fiction, that a reader considering suicide is right to expect dissuasion and something life-affirming in a story. For the writer who is just starting out, this assertion, stated with the passion and erudition that only Gardner could muster, is profoundly empowering. Gardner tells the punk writer the attention she pays to her art is worthy — is, in fact, the only important thing — because it is the difference between life and death.
Of course, Gardner caught flak in his critical execution of this maxim. He had no trouble locating writers who tried to dodge or purposely defeat this expectation of his, and he didn't hesitate to call them immoral. It's worth noting the writers he disparaged most — John Barth, and the Williams Gass and Bardis — are now disappearing from critical favor and public awareness with a speed that would have astonished the original readers of Gardner's criticism. It's also worth noting that, while Gardner had nothing but praise for John Irving, he certainly had a pickle up his ass when it came to E.L. Doctorow (whose novels I would, with a few exceptions, choose over Irving's in a heartbeat).
As for Gardner's fiction, well . . . If, as Godard said, the proper way to criticize a movie is to make one yourself, Gardner proved himself eager to criticize contemporary novels with novels of his own. This tendency has the unfortunate effect of miring much of his work to his time, particularly the novels he wrote to correct the noise and flash of metafiction. Again, any punk kid aspiring to write will have little difficulty reading Freddy's Book, or even October Light — but most serious readers over 30 will find their patience with metafictional concerns has long been exhausted in favor of an intuitive, Aristotelian acceptance of what really "works". You don't need a novel to help you reach that conclusion — you just need to get older.
The best of Gardner's fiction, however, is transcendent. Novels like The Sunlight Dialogues, and especially Grendel, are charmingly baroque, with ornate touches that belie the seriousness of Gardner's aesthetic ethic. Like his best criticism, they invite and reward multiple readings.
Even so, it seems as if it is Gardner's fate to occupy the same literary parabola as one of his heroes, Dorothea Brande. Brande was, in her day (the 1930s and 40s), a prolific writer of novels, short stories and plays. She was also a recognized critic. But her only surviving work, acknowledged and brought back into print every 15 years or so, is a snappy little book called Becoming A Writer (anyone frustrated with the New-Age-speak of The Artist's Way is encouraged to seek out a copy). The current reprint includes a forward by none other than "that asshole" himself. And if Gardner's continued presence in magazines like The Believer and Poets & Writers is any indication, we won't see The Art Of Fiction disappear from print anytime soon.
It's difficult to speculate what Gardner would have thought of his final claim to literary longevity, but it does qualify as a truly remarkable legacy. For writers proceeding on shaky legs, Gardner's encouragement is not only helpful in its precision and direction, it is the equivalent of a shot of existential steroids. Too bad John Irving is as bullish, if not as eloquent, in his opinions as Gardner was. Irving, who has a novel or two struggling to transcend the decades they were published in, might just consider himself fortunate should his name be recalled with the fervor of Gardner's.
Here Comes My 19th Nervous Techno-Breakdown
Something wrong with "my board", I'm told. So for now I type on borrowed time - and hardware. Thanks for your patience.
Monday, March 07, 2005
My Favorite SF Writer On My Favorite Theologian
Another Neal Stephenson interview, this one doubly noteworthy because 1) it's with Reason, and 2) Stephenson makes significant mention of theologian Walter Wink. My impression is Stephenson's bent is too materialist to entertain the earnest-minded dualism of most theologians, but Wink has clearly captured a significant corner of his imagination, and for provocative reasons.
My thanks to Tom for the link.
My thanks to Tom for the link.
Thursday, March 03, 2005
The Lucasfilm Empire Gears Up To Invade
Like many other men my age, I have an irrational fondness for Star Wars (the first installment of the franchise; which is to say, “Episode IV”). In my case, Star Wars happens to be the first movie I saw in a theatre. I was a 12-year-old small-town boy from the prairies, and a preacher’s kid to boot - George Lucas could not have asked for a more perfect audience for his film if he’d hired a team of mad geneticists to cook one up. It took quite a bit of exposure to the medium of film before I realized movies as a rule weren't as fun as Star Wars. It took even longer to realize there were also films with considerably more heft to them. But I did reach this sophisticated perspective by the time the third and final installment was released. I was old enough to vote by then; I saw that chapter only once, and considered it every bit as lame as the Disney/Dean Jones comedies from the decade we'd just survived.
Years later, when the fiddled-with editions of these films were released, a friend of mine had a personal encounter with the Lucasfilm Empire. My friend worked for one of the city entertainment weeklies, and was asked by his editor to devote a column spoofing Lucas/Star Wars. I read the piece (not his funniest, but not bad either) and commented on it when I saw him. "Oh, man," he said; "I'm just lucky I still have a job!" Apparently when Lucasfilm caught wind of this “editorial”, 20th Century Fox promptly yanked all their advertising from the paper - and this is a publication that devotes a third of its pages to movies and showtimes.
Thus George Lucas transforms himself from childhood hero to heel. As I watched the recent Episodes I and II, I figured Anakin Skywalker’s ho-hum transformation to Darth Vader was not a bad metaphor for George's transformation to Darth Lucas. We first see a clumsy kid with a big head embraced for his clever instincts and taken in by his heroes, the Jedi Knights. As he gets older, he becomes petulant and whiny, and won’t listen to the counsel of his peers and superiors. He makes bad decisions and assumes unparalleled control over unwilling subjects, to his own spiritual impoverishment, and eventually employs an army of faceless lawyers ... erm, “clones” to establish a totalitarian regime.
Last week my brother sent me to an obscure site address, and said he’d be curious to hear my thoughts, so long as I didn’t mind exposing myself to spoilers from the forthcoming Episode III. I checked out the site, and it amounted to a truly breathtaking breach in Lucas’ security. If you recall the “Star Wars Storybooks” that were published in the 70s, then you have a good idea of what this site looked like. Hundreds of movie stills, arranged in narrative order, with brief (execrably written) plot synopses stitching it together.
I thought about posting the link, then thought of my friend, and reconsidered. I shared it with some friends and my nephews. The general consensus was that Lucas knows whom to hire to make his ideas look "kewl". Of course, we haven’t yet been exposed to his evidently diminishing skills as a writer and director - until we are, Episode III remains an attractive package.
I checked the site again yesterday. It’s been shut down. It was only a matter of time – if the site’s counter was any indication, it had already received over half-a-million visits. Half-a-million! Peter Jackson may have wrested the “Popcorn” crown from the clumsy, aging kid with the big head, but Lucas should find some satisfaction knowing that, so long as we don’t have to listen to his wooden dialogue or watch his static direction, he continues to hold our adolescent imaginations.
Years later, when the fiddled-with editions of these films were released, a friend of mine had a personal encounter with the Lucasfilm Empire. My friend worked for one of the city entertainment weeklies, and was asked by his editor to devote a column spoofing Lucas/Star Wars. I read the piece (not his funniest, but not bad either) and commented on it when I saw him. "Oh, man," he said; "I'm just lucky I still have a job!" Apparently when Lucasfilm caught wind of this “editorial”, 20th Century Fox promptly yanked all their advertising from the paper - and this is a publication that devotes a third of its pages to movies and showtimes.
Thus George Lucas transforms himself from childhood hero to heel. As I watched the recent Episodes I and II, I figured Anakin Skywalker’s ho-hum transformation to Darth Vader was not a bad metaphor for George's transformation to Darth Lucas. We first see a clumsy kid with a big head embraced for his clever instincts and taken in by his heroes, the Jedi Knights. As he gets older, he becomes petulant and whiny, and won’t listen to the counsel of his peers and superiors. He makes bad decisions and assumes unparalleled control over unwilling subjects, to his own spiritual impoverishment, and eventually employs an army of faceless lawyers ... erm, “clones” to establish a totalitarian regime.
Last week my brother sent me to an obscure site address, and said he’d be curious to hear my thoughts, so long as I didn’t mind exposing myself to spoilers from the forthcoming Episode III. I checked out the site, and it amounted to a truly breathtaking breach in Lucas’ security. If you recall the “Star Wars Storybooks” that were published in the 70s, then you have a good idea of what this site looked like. Hundreds of movie stills, arranged in narrative order, with brief (execrably written) plot synopses stitching it together.
I thought about posting the link, then thought of my friend, and reconsidered. I shared it with some friends and my nephews. The general consensus was that Lucas knows whom to hire to make his ideas look "kewl". Of course, we haven’t yet been exposed to his evidently diminishing skills as a writer and director - until we are, Episode III remains an attractive package.
I checked the site again yesterday. It’s been shut down. It was only a matter of time – if the site’s counter was any indication, it had already received over half-a-million visits. Half-a-million! Peter Jackson may have wrested the “Popcorn” crown from the clumsy, aging kid with the big head, but Lucas should find some satisfaction knowing that, so long as we don’t have to listen to his wooden dialogue or watch his static direction, he continues to hold our adolescent imaginations.
Monday, February 28, 2005
A Complicated Kindness, by Miriam Toews elicits a complicated reader response
In my young adulthood, I worked as a counselor at a "Bible camp" in the Canadian Shield. The majority of its curriculum didn't differ much from its secular counterpart -- archery, leather-craft, canoeing, etc. -- but this was buttressed with daily chapel services and cabin Bible studies. The close of the week concluded with a fireside ritual. We lounged around the campfire, sang emotional worship songs, then quieted down and waited for the waterworks to begin.
By summer's end most counselors had moved to extreme ends of the faith spectrum: some had become exceedingly earnest, while others were coolly cynical. A few sat uncomfortably between the two extremes, and we were all exhausted. Our pubescent campers stood up and took turns stating the expected "I gave/rededicated my life to Christ," with variations that included expressions of gratitude for counselors or cabin-mates. I sighed, and settled down for my very last campfire ceremony. I'd spent the entire summer silently playing by the rules; I figured I'd about heard it all, and was ready to call it a day. But I was in for a surprise.
A 12-year-old girl stood up, and took a deep breath. "I'm writing a novel," she said. I shifted to get a better look at her. She was a nice kid, someone I hadn't paid much attention to -- until now. "Some of you will be uncomfortable with what I write," she continued; "In fact, a lot of you will. But I have to do this. I'm going to tell the truth -- I have no choice."
This was cause for some amusement. She didn't realize several of her counselors were up to similar mischief: a novel-in-progress about a readily identifiable Bible camp that played host to one outrageous scenario after another. We were dreaming up wild sexual orgies, exotic pagan rituals held deep in the woods, religious factions secretly arming their own militias, and an explosive conclusion that reduced the entire camp to blood and cinders. We wrote a few rough outlines, colored in some of the more scurrilous details, and frivolously fiddled with this grand "project," adhering stringently to the one aspect that finally doomed it: the entire book was to be written by committee, to guarantee that no single person involved could be inadvertently damned by a telling personal detail.
This camper, however, was up to genuine trouble. A solo project, telling the truth? What if a senior counselor named, say, "Wes K. Prediger" came off looking like a horse's ass? Fortunately for us, she was still a kid. A novel is a lot of pages, and most 12-year-olds don't have the stamina to craft that much truthful prose.
So there you go: true story. And it's tempting to declare that this young woman grew up to be none other than the internationally lauded, multiple award winning novelist Miriam Toews. Still, despite my spirited contributions to the biliously-conceived "Bible Camp Lampoon," I happen to believe the truth counts for something. The facts are I've long forgotten the camper's name, and Miriam is a year older than I am. But I have read A Complicated Kindness, and she's telling the truth about the freaky little town she and I grew up in -- a town which supplied the majority of said Bible camp's counselors.
It took me a while to muster up the wherewithal to read it. I've read some of her earlier stuff -- shorter magazine pieces, her novelized memoir of her father, snippets from her two previous novels. Her prose varies somewhat in quality and power, but there is no denying she is a writer of certain ability and perspicacity. Her sense of humor is cultivated and sly; readers either love it or are put off by it, and I must confess I belong to the latter category. I am, to my own great surprise, too close to the subject matter.
I'm hardly alone. I'm told our old town newspaper has devoted reams of press to correcting her supposedly misanthropic portrait of the place, particularly as it is presented in A Complicated Kindness -- a wildly misdirected effort if ever there was one. The imp in me wonders if I shouldn't step forward and offer to be the town's "Kramer," setting up literary tours to the various landmarks she mentions by name.
Pilgrims would likely be as affected seeing these modest locales as Dylanologists are when confronted with the Zimmerman house in Hibbing. Toews takes the sow's ear of small-town southern Manitoba and with her prose needlepoint stitches it into a silk purse. If her narrator's bittersweet take on the place seems at times too bitter, readers should bear in mind the inherent unreliability of the narrative perspective -- in this case, that of a desperate, self-aware 17-year-old girl too clever by half.
And yet, and yet ... actually knowing these places and these people creates problems for me when it comes to entering Toews' fictive dream. Her father was my sixth-grade teacher; my experience of him sits in some contrast to the man she presents in Swing Low, or in A Complicated Kindness -- indeed in all her books. It takes only the opening paragraphs, and I immediately recognize other people from Miriam's life: her mother and sister, some shared friends and neighbors, even the older carpet-laying boyfriend who left for Montreal (and, if I'm not mistaken, wrote his own discomfiting, highly experimental novel). There's no question these portraits cohere in the larger fictive picture she paints in her books. But they are also dissonant with the larger picture forever in flux in my own memory.
When Swing Low came out to national acclaim, her extended family and the small-town community was abuzz with disgruntlement. "That's not what really happened," was the general protest. I grew impatient with this line, and on more than one occasion snapped, "Then write your own damn book." This is still my official response, but A Complicated Kindness forces me to swallow hard and do a serious re-think. It reads as if it is the novel Miriam has spent her entire life working toward. It is a confidently accomplished and exquisite work that constructs an echo-chamber for complicated truths. If that makes me uncomfortable, it's hardly Miriam’s problem -- or yours for that matter. It is my own impoverishment, and you are free to consider it the result of a calcified imagination, best borne in solitude.
Until I write my own damn book, of course.
Footnote: the town's Mennonite Village Museum proudly sells Ms. Toews' entire ouevre alongside other cultural/religious staples, including Martyrs Mirror.
By summer's end most counselors had moved to extreme ends of the faith spectrum: some had become exceedingly earnest, while others were coolly cynical. A few sat uncomfortably between the two extremes, and we were all exhausted. Our pubescent campers stood up and took turns stating the expected "I gave/rededicated my life to Christ," with variations that included expressions of gratitude for counselors or cabin-mates. I sighed, and settled down for my very last campfire ceremony. I'd spent the entire summer silently playing by the rules; I figured I'd about heard it all, and was ready to call it a day. But I was in for a surprise.
A 12-year-old girl stood up, and took a deep breath. "I'm writing a novel," she said. I shifted to get a better look at her. She was a nice kid, someone I hadn't paid much attention to -- until now. "Some of you will be uncomfortable with what I write," she continued; "In fact, a lot of you will. But I have to do this. I'm going to tell the truth -- I have no choice."
This was cause for some amusement. She didn't realize several of her counselors were up to similar mischief: a novel-in-progress about a readily identifiable Bible camp that played host to one outrageous scenario after another. We were dreaming up wild sexual orgies, exotic pagan rituals held deep in the woods, religious factions secretly arming their own militias, and an explosive conclusion that reduced the entire camp to blood and cinders. We wrote a few rough outlines, colored in some of the more scurrilous details, and frivolously fiddled with this grand "project," adhering stringently to the one aspect that finally doomed it: the entire book was to be written by committee, to guarantee that no single person involved could be inadvertently damned by a telling personal detail.
This camper, however, was up to genuine trouble. A solo project, telling the truth? What if a senior counselor named, say, "Wes K. Prediger" came off looking like a horse's ass? Fortunately for us, she was still a kid. A novel is a lot of pages, and most 12-year-olds don't have the stamina to craft that much truthful prose.
So there you go: true story. And it's tempting to declare that this young woman grew up to be none other than the internationally lauded, multiple award winning novelist Miriam Toews. Still, despite my spirited contributions to the biliously-conceived "Bible Camp Lampoon," I happen to believe the truth counts for something. The facts are I've long forgotten the camper's name, and Miriam is a year older than I am. But I have read A Complicated Kindness, and she's telling the truth about the freaky little town she and I grew up in -- a town which supplied the majority of said Bible camp's counselors.
It took me a while to muster up the wherewithal to read it. I've read some of her earlier stuff -- shorter magazine pieces, her novelized memoir of her father, snippets from her two previous novels. Her prose varies somewhat in quality and power, but there is no denying she is a writer of certain ability and perspicacity. Her sense of humor is cultivated and sly; readers either love it or are put off by it, and I must confess I belong to the latter category. I am, to my own great surprise, too close to the subject matter.
I'm hardly alone. I'm told our old town newspaper has devoted reams of press to correcting her supposedly misanthropic portrait of the place, particularly as it is presented in A Complicated Kindness -- a wildly misdirected effort if ever there was one. The imp in me wonders if I shouldn't step forward and offer to be the town's "Kramer," setting up literary tours to the various landmarks she mentions by name.
 |
| Owners of The Trampoline House: I expect a cut of the profits. |
And yet, and yet ... actually knowing these places and these people creates problems for me when it comes to entering Toews' fictive dream. Her father was my sixth-grade teacher; my experience of him sits in some contrast to the man she presents in Swing Low, or in A Complicated Kindness -- indeed in all her books. It takes only the opening paragraphs, and I immediately recognize other people from Miriam's life: her mother and sister, some shared friends and neighbors, even the older carpet-laying boyfriend who left for Montreal (and, if I'm not mistaken, wrote his own discomfiting, highly experimental novel). There's no question these portraits cohere in the larger fictive picture she paints in her books. But they are also dissonant with the larger picture forever in flux in my own memory.
When Swing Low came out to national acclaim, her extended family and the small-town community was abuzz with disgruntlement. "That's not what really happened," was the general protest. I grew impatient with this line, and on more than one occasion snapped, "Then write your own damn book." This is still my official response, but A Complicated Kindness forces me to swallow hard and do a serious re-think. It reads as if it is the novel Miriam has spent her entire life working toward. It is a confidently accomplished and exquisite work that constructs an echo-chamber for complicated truths. If that makes me uncomfortable, it's hardly Miriam’s problem -- or yours for that matter. It is my own impoverishment, and you are free to consider it the result of a calcified imagination, best borne in solitude.
Until I write my own damn book, of course.
Footnote: the town's Mennonite Village Museum proudly sells Ms. Toews' entire ouevre alongside other cultural/religious staples, including Martyrs Mirror.
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
"This book changed my life! ... I think ...."
This weekend I gave a copy of James Wood's novel The Book Against God to a friend for his 40th birthday. I haven't yet read the book, which makes it a risky gift, though less so than giving away copies of a book that's "changed your life." It seemed worthwhile, because I'm entirely charmed by Wood's criticism. But then I consider how much I enjoy the criticism of Martin Amis, and how little I enjoy his fiction.
(If you haven't yet read any Martin Amis fiction, here's a quick exercise to save you time. Take any novel by Amis, open a page and randomly pick a paragraph. Read it out loud. You can't help but be impressed by the stinging, accumulative impact of that paragraph. They're all crafted like that. Unfortunately, when you add them up it usually makes for a joyless, if not repulsive, experience. Too bad, that.)
I've always disliked the canard, "Those who can't do, teach; those who can't teach, critique." Here's hoping Wood amounts to something of a renaissance man. I fully intend to read his novel, and I'm hoping the adulation of the chattering class has been honest, and not a defensive response to the articulate and frequently damning insights of his essays. More than that, I'm desperately hoping it's a book that will stick to my ribs, because I recently came to a discomfiting realization: here I am approaching the close of my 30s, and I have yet to encounter a novel that speaks to me with the depth of so many of the books I read in my 20s.
There are plenty of cheerful reasons for this somewhat sobering epiphany, the best being the accumulation of age and experience. The truly "novel" is fast disappearing - is, in fact, something I'm increasingly disinclined to seek out. So while I've read some memorable novels in the last ten years - Fight Club, The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, The Poisonwood Bible - they didn't quite penetrate deeply enough to achieve importance. A few did - The Road Home, Underworld (DeLillo seemingly scorched his wings with that one, and I love him for it), American Pastoral - but none of them hit me as hard as any of the greats from my 20s.
I hardly know where to begin with that decade. I have to skip over everything I encountered in my undergrad degree, for starters (Chekov, Hemingway, Austen – so many incontestable greats). After that we're dealing with dynamics that are in seriously weird flux: Cormac McCarthy, Douglas Coupland, and always Frank Miller. Still, I have no difficulty naming the novel that lodged itself in the heart of my 20s (a sentiment shared by more than a few friends who received copies from me): Moon Palace, by Paul Auster.
That book, ostensibly the narrative of a man recounting his 20s, is immediate enough to grip a young reader, yet is richly loaded with a perspective that comes long after that decade has been survived. Its chief concern is identity. Who are you once you are removed from your family? How does an environment as alienating as New York City affect your sense of self? How does your self-concept change as you discover more about your parents and their parents before them? Auster's narrative circulates around fathers and sons; lost history restored in fragments; insanity and recovery; and the ever-present wilderness. It is an artful and trenchant encapsulation of the fears and consolations I experienced as a young adult. If we read to know we are not alone, that was the book that most reassured me.
The closest I've come to such a phenomenon for my 30s is probably Annie Dillard's For The Time Being - not a novel at all, but an extended meditation on death, birth, and the geography of clouds (all of which make imminent sense when you witness the birth of your daughters, and the death of friends and family members). Perhaps my error lies in avoiding the ever-popular Life of Pi? I've got four months left, dear reader: if you have any recommendations, make them now!
(If you haven't yet read any Martin Amis fiction, here's a quick exercise to save you time. Take any novel by Amis, open a page and randomly pick a paragraph. Read it out loud. You can't help but be impressed by the stinging, accumulative impact of that paragraph. They're all crafted like that. Unfortunately, when you add them up it usually makes for a joyless, if not repulsive, experience. Too bad, that.)
I've always disliked the canard, "Those who can't do, teach; those who can't teach, critique." Here's hoping Wood amounts to something of a renaissance man. I fully intend to read his novel, and I'm hoping the adulation of the chattering class has been honest, and not a defensive response to the articulate and frequently damning insights of his essays. More than that, I'm desperately hoping it's a book that will stick to my ribs, because I recently came to a discomfiting realization: here I am approaching the close of my 30s, and I have yet to encounter a novel that speaks to me with the depth of so many of the books I read in my 20s.
There are plenty of cheerful reasons for this somewhat sobering epiphany, the best being the accumulation of age and experience. The truly "novel" is fast disappearing - is, in fact, something I'm increasingly disinclined to seek out. So while I've read some memorable novels in the last ten years - Fight Club, The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, The Poisonwood Bible - they didn't quite penetrate deeply enough to achieve importance. A few did - The Road Home, Underworld (DeLillo seemingly scorched his wings with that one, and I love him for it), American Pastoral - but none of them hit me as hard as any of the greats from my 20s.
I hardly know where to begin with that decade. I have to skip over everything I encountered in my undergrad degree, for starters (Chekov, Hemingway, Austen – so many incontestable greats). After that we're dealing with dynamics that are in seriously weird flux: Cormac McCarthy, Douglas Coupland, and always Frank Miller. Still, I have no difficulty naming the novel that lodged itself in the heart of my 20s (a sentiment shared by more than a few friends who received copies from me): Moon Palace, by Paul Auster.
That book, ostensibly the narrative of a man recounting his 20s, is immediate enough to grip a young reader, yet is richly loaded with a perspective that comes long after that decade has been survived. Its chief concern is identity. Who are you once you are removed from your family? How does an environment as alienating as New York City affect your sense of self? How does your self-concept change as you discover more about your parents and their parents before them? Auster's narrative circulates around fathers and sons; lost history restored in fragments; insanity and recovery; and the ever-present wilderness. It is an artful and trenchant encapsulation of the fears and consolations I experienced as a young adult. If we read to know we are not alone, that was the book that most reassured me.
The closest I've come to such a phenomenon for my 30s is probably Annie Dillard's For The Time Being - not a novel at all, but an extended meditation on death, birth, and the geography of clouds (all of which make imminent sense when you witness the birth of your daughters, and the death of friends and family members). Perhaps my error lies in avoiding the ever-popular Life of Pi? I've got four months left, dear reader: if you have any recommendations, make them now!
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